Wolves Wild

Time for a reminder that the trees aren’t always bare. This is a woodland clearing in Sutton Park as it was last August.

A fairly common fungus species, and one of the more visible ones now the weather is getting hard, sulfur tufts form large clumps of yellow mushrooms. These were growing on the lawn outside the flats on Merridale Road.

A bracket fungus, a parasite and killer of many types of tree, it is shaped a little bit like the hoof of a horse. It is also called the Tinder fungus because it burns easily, and can be used to start a fire from a spark.  Ötzi the Iceman, whose five thousand year old remains were found in an Alpine glacier some years ago, was carrying four chunks of this fungus.

These specimens were growing on the trunk of a tree beside the Smestow Valley LNR railway walk, near the Alpine Way access point. The unnatural brightness of the greens of the moss and ivy leaves in the lower pictures is because I needed to use the on-camera flash to get enough light for the photos.

The remains of Dudley Castle and Dudley Priory seen on a late autumn day.

Another mushroom growing in lawn style conditions.

The most soothing spot in the city centre – if you ignore the noise of the traffic going round the ring road.

Another of these mushrooms growing right by the ring road near to Chapel Ash roundabout.

The bush this was on is growing just inside Chillington wharf.

I spotted this in early December, but thought it might be a good picture to reflect the hangovers many people will have today.

I presume the balloons had been used in some celebration in or outside the flats which are just visible beyond the old warehouse in the picture above.

That picture has (obviously) been subjected to more elaborate processing than is usual with those posted to this blog.

“When gorse is out of blossom, kissing’s out of fashion” – in the Wikipedia wording of the old saw. This gorse was flowering earlier this month next to Chillington wharf (yesterday’s post).